Abstract
Compartmentalisation of the respiratory tract microbiota in patients with different chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) severity degrees needs to be systematically investigated. In addition, it is unknown if the inflammatory and emphysematous milieux in patients with COPD are associated with changes in the respiratory tract microbiota and host macrophage gene expression.
We performed a cross-sectional study to compare non-COPD controls (n=10) to COPD patients (n=32) with different disease severity degrees. Samples (n=187) were obtained from different sites of the upper and lower respiratory tract. Microbiota analyses were performed by 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing and host gene expression analyses by quantitative real-time PCR of distinct markers of bronchoalveolar lavage cells.
Overall, the microbial communities of severe COPD (Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) grade 3/4) patients clustered significantly differently to controls and less severe COPD (GOLD 1/2) patients (permutational multivariate ANOVA (MANOVA), p=0.001). However, we could not detect significant associations between the different sampling sites in the lower airways. In addition, the chosen set of host gene expression markers significantly separated COPD GOLD 3/4 patients, and we found correlations between the composition of the microbiota and the host data.
In conclusion, this study demonstrates associations between host gene expression and microbiota profiles that may influence the course of COPD.
Abstract
Associations of the host immune response and a disordered microbiota in patients with different COPD severity degrees http://ow.ly/h2mW30k9Nua
Footnotes
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Conflict of interest: None declared.
Support statement: We gratefully acknowledge funding of this study by a Swiss National Science Foundation Sinergia grant (CRSII3–141875) to B.J. Marsland, C. von Garnier and M. Hilty. Funding information for this article has been deposited with the Crossref Funder Registry.
- Received January 29, 2018.
- Accepted April 28, 2018.
- Copyright ©ERS 2018
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